Guild Wars 2

I don’t agree with all your solutions, but most of those need some changes you are right. Just 3 things

- The tooltip of Zealot’s Defense say ‘’destroy projectiles’’ so there is no error there.
- It’s Hunter’s Ward not Hunter’s Shot.
- What you wrote about Shield of Judgment, it seem like there is something missing. You didn’t complete it.

A m b Y.9704:

i have a question tho. ik most of the combs but i think still more that idk, cuz yasterday i was playing CoF and one of the praty said give us fury for 2 min i was like WTF i don’t anything about that :P they kicked me at the endi deserved that XD
The question is how do i give them fury for longer than 10 sec i believe ?

Persisting Flames is a trait that give you longer fire field duration and give you might when you blast them.

If you were using a staff you can’t really give 2min. You have only 3 blast at max so you can give 30sec each approx 30sec. In theory you can keep perma fury, in practice it will almost perma fury.

If you were using S/X then you have between 5 and 6 blast so you can give around a min of fury each approx 30sec.

SlyDevil.3952:

engineer turret is basically, place -> overcharge -> detonate using toolbelt
it will cleanse 2 conditions in aoe as well as providing a big burst heal, your dodge roll can’t take you out of its field in 1 go, and skills after the initial placement can be done mid dodge roll so with a bit of practice you should be good to heal up on the move

Detonating your healing turret isn’t a good idea in most situation since it increase the cooldown on your turret, you want to pick your turret up. Without detonating it’s 360hp/s on average, with detonating it’s 318hp/s on average. Of course if you need to a burst of heal right now, detonating is a good option.

@ Adjust

- Engineer : They are not part of the meta, but they are pretty good. They have the 3rd best dps of the game and are the best at giving vulnerability. Unfortunatly Warrior, Elementalist, Thief and Guardian can also give vulnerability. Not much, but with together with the right build and Glyph of Storm they can put pretty much all bosses to 25 for a burst without a Engineer. But it usually need the right composition, so in pugs engineer is the safest way to reach max vulnerability. It’s also a jack of all trades master of none. It can stealth if you don’t have a thief, it can might up if you don’t have an Elementalist or a PS Warrior.

- Ranger is in a similar spot as the engineer. It’s not part of the meta, but it can do a great job. It have the 4th best dps of the game and frost spirit and spotter are great party buff (but Warrior is far superior). He can also give good burst of vulnerability. But using the Sword can be a bit tricky since you can’t dodge you need to use your skills to evade.

- PvP is the best way to get tomes of knowledge, but that’s not the best way to level up. Edge of the Mist is the best way or you can do a dungeon and switch to a low character just before the end so the low level get the xp.

- Thief : In PvE they are one of the three best profession with Thief and Elementalist. They have the highest single target dps (but Elementalist beat them in burst with Icebow). They bring a good sustain Vulnerability, have plenty of blinds and stealth allow to shorten some dungeon by a lot.

- Guardian : They are part of the meta, but are not needed everywhere. They are master of keeping the party alive with protection. Blind, Aegis, Reflection, Condition Removal, Protection, etc. They allow your team to gather more mobs together to kill them faster while keeping them above 90% to trigger the scholar damage modifier. When those abilities are needed they are an invaluable party member, but since the Guardian have the 6th dps, when those defensive abilities are not needed, you are better with another profession.

I just saw the numbers for the Necro GS.

The auto-attack hit for 646 with a cast time of 0.75sec. It seem high but keep in mind that all the numbers they gave us from the expansion are high. Just to give you an exemple, the auto-attack of the Dragon Hunter’s longbow is 574 with the exact same cast time.

The GS #2 which is suppose to be the hard hitter does 1520 damage with a cast time of 1.25 sec and a cooldown of 8 second. The Dragon hunter Longbow #2 hit for 1641 dmg have a cast time of 0.75 and a cooldown of 4 second.

It’s soon to have a jugment on these number since it highly dependent of what are the stats when they took those picture. We’ll have to wait to test the actual coefficient, but unless they did the lifestream on a zerker Dragon hunter and a sentinel Reaper, these number seem pretty bad for PvE.

Not that high direct damage and focus on chill, no damage modifier from the new trait line. It seem that the Reaper is suppose to be PvP oriented and won’t help the necromancer at all in PvE dungeon. Maybe the Reaper’s Shroud and shout will make a difference?

Glass canon + active defense + support = trinity in this game YEAH

Rin.1046:

Part of the problem is that Anet wanted a system where no healer or tank is required, but then offered stat options to build healers and tanks. In PvP and WvW this is not an issue, because those roles can be very useful. But in PvE they are not so much, and they cannot make them more useful without risking the negatives of a trinity.

True. They should really have seperated PvP and PvE.

WvW and sPvP can have the same system, but if you mix it with PvE, it’s just messy.

Andraus.3874:

This is basically what the trinity boils down to: it allows players to have more challenging fights as you need to have players work together in timing certain skills to keep the rest of the party alive or at optimal performance.

I never felt any of those ‘’players work together ’’ because of Holy Trinity. As a tank, I was doing my job, almost ignoring the rest of the team. As a healer it was the same, but I was looking at my side bar to make sure I was keeping everybody alive. There was teamwork in holy trinity game, but it wasn’t because of the trinity. In SWOTOR for exemple you had to prepare and be on the same page for the order in which you should kill the mobs, otherwise it could end badly. This was coordination, but nothing to do with holy trinity.

The reason why some people like holy trinity is because it give you a role, an important part of the team. You were the healer, if you stop your team will die and it give you an importance. As a tank if you stop doing your job the boss run after the healer and dps which are not equip to survive and the team fell apart. Since you usually only have 3 dps, if you don’t do your job right the total dps of the team if affected immediately. That’s why people like the trinity. But we all know that those strenght also come with weakness. It’s easy to put the responsibility on the healer or the tank for a wipe, the number of people that want to play tank is limited, it can be hard to find a complete party and you are hostage to the tank and healer because if they leave it’s you that will have a hard time finding a new team, not them. It also limit your role. As a healer you heal, as a tank you tank and as a dps you dps, which can be a narrow way of playing.

There is enough place in the game industry to both non holy trinity and holy trinity game. We don’t need every game to follow the exact same recipe.

Andraus.3874:

To some extent we have some coordinated game play with reflects, water fields, aegis, vulnerability stacking, might stacking (fire fields), and fury uptime “stacking”. However we can get through almost all content without using any of these coordinated play tactics. Granted we might be slower and wipe a bit more but it’s still possible to make it through.

That’s a design choice by Anet. It’s a casual game and it was designed to be completed with any build/group. You may like it or not, but that a core concept of the game and a selling point.

CookieMonster.5869:

I mean I just recently started the game and would like to get this gear but it seems like a pain. It’s just not fair that others who have been around since launch have multiple sets. It makes me feel so far behind everyone else

I crafted 6 legendaries since launch. Do you feel it’s unfair and make you feel so far behind everyone else? Do we need to give you some legendary to make you feel better?

The thruth is that ascended wasn’t a really good idea from Anet, but it’s too late to change it, they are stuck. If they leave it as it is people will complain that ascended limit build diversity and is a grind that don’t belong in GW2. If they make ascended and exotic of the same level then people that crafted ascended will feel cheated and will complain. There is no ideal solution here.

fishball.7204:

Guardian is good for CoE imo because stability offsets the crystal bug from Alpha as well as reflects for golem and double sanctuary for Bjarl/Tree dude.

I prefer a Mesmer for Golem and Icebow or Rocks for Bjarl.

Guardian
It’s ok in AC, but not invaluable. Guardian is my main and I never bring him into AC.
SE and Arah are problably the best place for a Guardian. The guardian is difficult to replace with another profession there and really change how you gonna run it with or without one. TA, CM and HotW are easier with a guardian. You can replace it by thief and mesmer, but a guardian will do the job better there. A guardian can make your life easier in AC and CoE, but other profession will bring more there. CoF, there isn’t much reason to bring a guardian here except maybe for path 3.

Thief
Thief are great for Arah, CM and TA because of all the skip possible with stealth. They can also help in CoE and AC. For the remaining dungoen they are still a decent choice, but not as valuable as for the 5 dungeons I already mentioned.

Tying active defense to stats won’t change a thing. There is 3 result possible by doing that.

1) You can complete the content with the basic active defense. No need of vigor from healing power, no need of aegis from toughness. Then the meta will be zerker like right now. It will just be a bit harder for bad player to complete all content in zerker.

2) You cannot complete the content with the basic active defense, but you can use trait and sigil to do the job. Then the meta will still be zerker, we just gonna use some defensive trait and sigil.

3) You cannot complete the content with the basic active defense and the best way to go is to take some healing power for most profession (vigor) and toughness for guardian (aegis). We’ll take the minimum needed and take zerker for the rest.

I see zero advantage to any of those situation.

Saiyan.1704:

Thaddeus.4891:

You seem to all forgot about the changes to trait. Radiance won’t be as good anymore, while the emphasis on symbol make Honor a better choice. At thing are right now, it seem that Zeal, Honor, DH could be the new meta. But a lot could change before release.

Not everyone is going to specialize in Symbols and any build that takes 2+ medi skills are going to want Valor over Honor tree.

Any type of Condi/Hybrid build will find Radiance 3x more significant than any other tree.

I see the guardian having three different meta builds.

It’s a discussion about PvE meta. Pls read.

Well they could use a little clean up.

- [Guide]30 pts in valor gameplay (Hammer) is outdated and seem abandoned
- Post your build received one entry per month or less now and nobody answer to people posting build there. People are better off just creating a tread about their build.

But other than that, they seem to be all be up to date or alive. I guess that we could and should merge and update all that when HoT and the new traits will go live, but it’s all good for now.

Boro.7359:

Not unmodified aegis mind you, but one that big hits can remove multiples of, and possibly still hit hard enough to reduce your HP quite a bit:

Basically:

• Stacks of aegis.
• Attacks have an aegis removal strength.
• If you have more aegis stacks than the attack’s strength, you are unaffected by the attack.
• Else, you take reduced damage. (let’s say, aegis_removal_strength*10 in % of the damage)

It would still be skill based, and many skills that give one aegis right now could end up giving us 5-10 stacks depending on traits and gear.

But what would be the point of doing that. This change nothing to the ’’problem’’.

Pandeh.5248:

OwikGall.1607:

Thaddeus.4891:

OwikGall.1607:

Not too many viable anti-cond options for a warrior that I know of.

Shoutbow and Shouts Frontliner are saying hi. Those are two of the best anti-condition build in the game and both are Warrior build.

Well then, I should get acquainted with them.

Sword/Warhorn with traited warhorn is quite awesome as well.

+ You can get the runes that remove a condi on shouts.

Sword/Warhorn with traited warhord = Shoutbow build

You seem to all forgot about the changes to trait. Radiance won’t be as good anymore, while the emphasis on symbol make Honor a better choice. At thing are right now, it seem that Zeal, Honor, DH could be the new meta. But a lot could change before release.

Windsagio.1340:

Let’s be frank though, it’s just a ‘thing’. Situation for necros is not nearly as bad as people let on, but it’s become accepted common knowledge that they’re worthless.

They are not worthless, but there is just too many thing going against them. Limited cleave, one of the worth dps, limited support, etc. Engineer and Ranger are not meta either, but at least they have higher than average dps and both have something useless. Engineer give a high amount of vulnerability and can stack might/stack stealth if they need to. Ranger can give respectable burst of vulnerability and spotter/frost spirit.

Necor isn’t worthless, but it’s the least useful profession by a good margin.

Yes it will change the picture because the strength of the Bomb over Nade is the auto-attack. In a real rotation, the strength of bomb won’t matter as much.

For lupi cheese mode. Stand your ground, Save yourself and Wall of reflection is an awesome loadout. When he switch phase, take your focus and when he stop being invulnerable pop stand your ground and focus 5 so he can’t knock you back or damage you. Place your wall in the right place while you are invulnerable and when he start that attack you just have to release your wall and pop save yourself for the fury (if you don’t have someone to provide it).

That’s the easiest way to do Lupi ever. Even solo is brain dead with that. A bit too easy to be fun.

6/4/2/2/0 will give you more dps than 6/4/2/0/2 for both staff and icebow. The drawback is that you may not hit 5 targets as much without blasting staff on your Lava Front and Meteor shower.

If Necro can do more dps than Warrior and Guardian and cleave i’ll be happy. It won’t be part of the meta, but who care. As long as you can bring one in your party without not a huge sacrifice like right now it will alright. Especially if shouts/gs/reaper’s shroud is nice to play.

- Absolute resolution have almost no reason to be there. Very few fight need more than purging flames and taking absolute resolution will decrease your dps. I could see it like in SE path 3 when you fight General Volkov because he give a lot of bleed, but in general you only take it when can’t really stay alive in full dps.

- For the Spike Corridor Gravelings you recommend wall of reflection. I guess you may not have the time to remove it from after the Spider Queen, but you do not need it for the fight.

- Howling King. Are you sure that you can reflect the scream of the Howling king?? Never heard of that one. You can reflect the cone attack form Colossus Rumblus, but the Howling King??.

- Graveling Trap Event. You strategy is weird. I usually don’t change a thing, just make sure I have stability and purging flames, stack in the right corner on top of 1 trap. 1 guy is using the trap, the other 4 are dpsing. No need really for cc and when the breeder spawn I aggro him with my focus 4.

- Ghost Eater. No need for Purging flames. At worst he can give your team 2 stack of bleed, but reflect+aegis should protect you. Shield of Avenger is only needed if your team are gonna use 2 traps. If your team have enough dps to kill him in one trap (what should happen) Shield of Avenger is useless.

- Colossus Rumblus. You should add that the reflect is only needed for one attack. Rumblus usually start the fight with the attack Shockwave (8 ground attack that can knockdown you). He have a 10sec cooldown on it and if the second time he use it he is at 25% of less of his HP, then he gonna also make a projectile attack that can be reflected and pretty much instant kill him. In a good team you will probably kill him before he can do a second shockwave, but in pugs the fight may be long enough to do it. But it can be hard with a wall. Easier with a feedback.

- Bloody Victoria. You should add that you can’t block or evade the stun. So either put stab 1 sec after she went into stealth so people don’t get stunned, or wait until she stun someone and then put aegis.

- Frost. The projectile defense is for the turrets not the boss itself. So need need of that if you gonna agro him in a corner or something like that.

- Taylor. Don’t really waste condition removal on the immobilize. If someone get immo, the turret will continue to shoot at him until you destroy it.

- Marius. I don’t know why Hallowed ground. Retreat or signet of bane seem better choice there.

- Wahlen. You should add that condition clear is for the trash. The boss itself only give vulnerability.

-Vallog. There is only one attack that can be reflected and it’s the fireball (you will see a fiery effect on him). Shield of avenger will only be useful in a long fight. For the spike attack, look at his feet. When he gallop on place, the attack will follow quickly. It’s hard to see because of all the AoE.

Boro.7359:

Well, if we stack aegis, we could might as well stack blind, and if one class can’t stack one then maybe they can stack the other, so perhaps that can help alleviate the issue.

Stacking aegis is a terrible idea. The goal behind aegis is to time it well. You don’t want to waste it on a small attack that save you 1k of hp, you want to keep it and time it well on the big attack that will save you 10k of hp. If you can stack them, there is no skillz needed.

But I like the idea of skilled healing skill. Healing of block, small ground targeting healing skill (with a target not bigger than 100-200 range), maybe directional healing, stuff like that. But it doesn’t change the fact that active defense is superior than healing AND doesn’t need stats from gear. 1 skill can block a 10K attack, while you probably will never heal for that much with 1 skill and you need to sacrifice much dps to get that active defense, while you gonna need to sacrifice a big portion of your dps to get that high heal.

Jockum.1385:

If a fullcleric would do – let say – 90% dmg of a fullzerk, fullcleric would be an option. Healing is atm very helpful in GW2 – but the lost dmg is usually not worth it.

Is this a joke? Ok let’s roll with it, how will you increase the damage of cleric exactly. So right now zerker have 2577 offensive stats for a full ascended gear, zero defensive stats, zero healing stats. A cleric gear will give you 745 offensive stats, 745 defensive stats and 1087 healing stats.

So who cleric reach 90% of the damage of a zerker gear?

- You boost the power to 2300? So cleric have 2300 power, 1087 healing power and 745 toughness? While Zerker stay the same?

- You give cleric 1087 healing power, 978 power, 670 precision, 670 ferocity, 745 toughness?

- You nerf Zerker but don’t touch cleric?

- You invent a new overpowered offensive stats to replace the power in the cleric gear?

- A rune with 90% of healing power converted into power WHAT. These kind of rune work in the 7% not 90%.

This is just a joke right. You can be that….

OwikGall.1607:

Not too many viable anti-cond options for a warrior that I know of.

Shoutbow and Shouts Frontliner are saying hi. Those are two of the best anti-condition build in the game and both are Warrior build.

Cyninja.2954:

So we are going from one gear fits all (and can be traded freely between characters) to best in slot per class.

The problem of people wanting to play something different isn’t fixed since they are forced to play in their best in slot for their class.

The problem of having to create multiple sets of gear since you can’t share them any more between same armor characters is created forcing people to spend even more time and gold on getting ascended.

How is any one winning in this scenario?

Well it’s the best solution I can come up with to try to please all those anti-zerk poster. A kind of compromise. Again, personally I prefer the current system.

Harper.4173:

Actually you can calculate if condition duration for GS’s vulnerability or might duration is more effective. You can actually figure out which of the 3rd stats provides the party with the most benefits and make that the meta.

Jesus. I know. There will be a meta gear for each profession. My point is that it won’t be the same for each profession. For exemple, we’ll figure out that hey boon duration is the best choice for a warrior. But for an engineer boon duration will be useless while Condi Duration will be the best choice. Different profession will have different meta gear. But yes, for each profession there will be only one gear that is meta.

It will also change depending on your group. If you have a Engineer to take care of the vulnerability your elementalist might be better off with boons duration to give more fury and might. But if you don’t have any engineer, you might be better off with condi duration to reach max vulnerability.

Harper.4173:

I highly doubt they’re going to rework the entire game. There would be massive uproar from the community. Consider how much time and gold has been invested in ascended already.

And the core problem remains – there will be no freedom to choose since the best option will be found and used – regardless if it has 2 or 3 or even 10 offensive stats.

I’m not saying they should do it, or that there is chance that Anet will do it. I’m fine with the current system.

The core ’’problem’’ don’t remains. If the 3rd stats isn’t a dps stats, there won’t be 1 gear to rule them all like right now. There will be 1 best option for each profession, but the gear will change depending on the profession. Again look at my exemple. The best gear for an engineer would be Power, Precision, Condition Duration because he give vulnerability. The best gear for a PS Warrior would be Power, Precision, Boon Duration to give more might. It will also make the difference between those gear less important. A PS Warrior with Power, Precision, Condition Duration will not hurt AT ALL his team, if they can reach 25 stack of might by other means. Since the 3rd stats isn’t a dps stats, there is not a clear winner. It will depend on the situation and the party.

Again like I said. Condition Duration could be a problem since it’s support/dps stats. Maybe no gear with condition duration should exist or at least not a Power, Precision, Condition Duration.

Jerus.4350:

Thaddeus.4891:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Fair enough! It is really ez mode or are they actually using very special builds and classes, though?

Well I saw that with Elementalist, Guardian and Warrior mostly. Maybe it could work with Engineer and Mesmer too. I’m not sure about ranger and necromancer, don’t think they have enough healing capability. And it definitively don’t work with a thief since he’s not design in that direction.

There is a video of a warrior soloing the Mossman in level 50 alone with no dodge. Just to give you an idea.

Yeah thief is funny in that Invigorating precision makes doing more dps = better healing. So you can actually be more defensively sound in Zerk gear than say valkyrie gear assuming you’re able to avoid the one shot situations.

An invigorating precision + malice signet thief in Magi gear. Maybe thief can facetank mobs after all.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Fair enough! It is really ez mode or are they actually using very special builds and classes, though?

Well I saw that with Elementalist, Guardian and Warrior mostly. Maybe it could work with Engineer and Mesmer too. I’m not sure about ranger and necromancer, don’t think they have enough healing capability. And it definitively don’t work with a thief since he’s not design in that direction.

There is a video of a warrior soloing the Mossman in level 50 alone with no dodge. Just to give you an idea.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Likewise, ideally you should also be able to combine various gear types and end up with roughly the same results. Zerker gear should not end up being such a dominant set among the community.

Ok so you are saying that Soldier gear should be as good as zerker. It should give ‘’roughly the same results’’ like you said.

Now explain me how because I don’t see it. How can Soldier gear give roughly the same results???

Eurhetemec.9052:

Thaddeus.4891:

More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

You’d need to boost passive stuff like Tou/Vit/Heal to make it even possible with non-Zerker, though, I’d think.

Nope. That’s not true. You have plenty of video of full cleric group that unbind their dodge button and clear arah and it’s an easy mode. They just tank and outheal everything Arah can throw at them. Active Defense is independent of your gear. So a zerker guys have as much active defense as a soldier gear. The only difference is that the zerker guys kill stuff faster, while the soldier gear can take more hit in the face.

Jerus.4350:

Thanks Thad for the more thorough explanation. Again, I think making Concussion Bomb do the power damage of Prybar, and maybe an increase on firebomb would be enough to push bombs to be the higher damage. So really not much of a change required to create that situation.

Yup. Bomb really need to be the top dps kit so you have to make a choice. Do I take the best dps kit, or do I sacrifice a portion of my personal dps to give more vulnerability.

The problem is that vulnerability is too easy to get right now and it seem Anet is going to make it easier in the future. Dragon Hunter will be a beast at giving vulnerability.

Fenrir.3609:

It doesn’t actually create more options though, it just shifts from one optimal gear choice to another. Trying to force in one defensive stat for the sake of it seems pointless.

Well it give more option in the sense that not profession will use the same exact gear. But I know, it doesn’t really change anything. I’m not trying to make people accept this idea, i’m not convinced myself. It’s just the only option that I can see where you don’t have full glass gear as the only optimal choice. Personnally, I’m good with the current system as long as they create trully challenging content and fix condition damage in pve. That’s all i’m asking.

Fenrir.3609:

Eurhetemec.9052:

The fact that all the serious enemies tend to rely on slow, heavy attacks means Block/Dodge/etc. have way more value than Tou/Vit/Heal in most Dungeon/Fractal situations.

In an active combat system, active defense should have way more value than passive defense. Even so, said passive defensive gear/builds are more than powerful enough to trivialize a large amount of the games pve content.

Someone mentioned something along the lines of “zerkers should be punished when not taking supportive players”. The point is, they do. The support is gained through active defense, as it should be. Some still seem to be equating “support” with standing at the back of the party spamming heals or taunt/tank/buff, a line of thinking simply not at odds at all with this games combat system (instanced pve).

True. But the content content is not challenging enough. We don’t really need a guardian or mesmer in most of the current content. We need really need protection or weakness except maybe in fractal 50 melee. We need try to give vigor to the team, we never need to take sigil of energy except in solo, etc. More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

Harper.4173:

This does not work. Because they would still be running the equivalent of “zerker” which means best dps – only instead of 3 stats you would only take two.

Yes but zerker now is 3 stats out of 3. If it was 2 stats out of 3 (hell it could be 3 stats out of 4, i don’t care). Then people could take zerker and still have a choice left for the 3rd stats which would be support or defensive oriented. Condition Duration could create a problem because maybe Power, Precision, Condition Duration would be the only optimal gear since condition duration is hybrid. It’s a support and dps stats. But now we enter into detail or a undeveloped idea, so….

Harper.4173:

This solution is basically nerfing our damage and making everything take longer but doesn’t change anything else.

It’s nerfing only if they remove ferocity and won’t balance anything at all. Like i said, they could keep ferocity and give us 4 stats gear instead of 3. Or they could remove ferocity and balance things out so the nerf isn’t too high. They could boost power, or they could merge precision and ferocity together. There is a lot of option to limit or eliminate the nerf all together.

WGuardian.1028:

@Harper, i hope u read everything u see and don’t troll. Meta stretagy for PvE is “kill everything as fast as u can”. With example above warriors will take boon duration to make more use of their might spreading ( they don’t use condi weapons in PvE now), guardians will take boon duration, engis will take boon or condi duration, necros will take condi and so on with other classes. This is how u get three and we still have same stratagy to kill everything fast.

As u said ( and Thaddeus.4891 before you) this will be a big revamp for game but this is still best option i saw.

What Harper is trying to say, is that it will still not be different option. The meta will be PS Warrior with Power/Precision/Boon Duration. If you use another set of gear, you won’t be meta. There will have different option for different profession, but only one best option for each profession.

In the end it would be a big revamp that could create other problem and people will still cry about it.

SlyDevil.3952:

90 nade hits in 30secs(1 freeze + 5 shrapnel possible)
34 bombs
So i did 2 30sec rotations, using just grenade skill 1 you get 29.7 total coefficients. If you include 1 freeze grenade(2 would require a 40+sec rotation) and 5 shrapnel(6 takes just over 30secs) you get 33.51
The bomb kit hits 42.5.

So, disregarding vuln and other traits. Bomb is the best for damage on a slot 1 attack.(Sorry Jerus). Grenades gets 21% less damage than bombs even when you use the higher coefficient attacks. I heard a mysterious rumor that bosses won’t have the 50% reduction to vuln, so bomb could actually make a play for an auto attack(maybe not with speed clears, depends which other classes could drop their vuln on crit skills to get more damage).

You forgot to use Grenade Barrage btw. It should be 36.02 coefficient and not 33.51

But you are right. With the damage coefficient alone, Bomb get on top. But not taking into account the condition damage make your numbers useless. Especially since with the expansion, there will no longer be any restriction to the number of stack.

With the meta build you have 70% of condition duration. So your 5 shrapnel will make 15 stack of 17seconds. Shrapnel have a 15% chance of creating a stack of bleed (20.4sec). You gonna launch 98 grenades during that 30sec so about 14 stack of bleed. And finally you have Sharpshooter that have 33% chance to give 5.1sec of bleed on crits. On a meta build you should reach between 92% and 100% depending on the presence of a ranger. Let’s say 100% to make thing easier, this make 32 stack of 5.1sec. In total, grenade will give 703.8 sec of bleed for 40468.5 dmg in 30sec

Bomb will give you 5stack of 20.4sec from shrapnel and 11stack of 5.1sec from sharpshooter. A total of 158.11 sec of bleed for a total of 9091.32 dmg.

In total, grenade in 30sec will do 95544.91 direct damage and 40468.5 condi dmg for 4 533.78 dps. Bomb in 30sec will do 112 733.45 direct damage and 9091.32 condi dmg for 4060.82 dps. So in total, even if bomb do more direct damage, grenade still do more total dps, while giving more vulnerability. Of course, the fact that grenade rely a bit more on condition damage, will mean that it’s dps will lag a bit more than bombs.

Erron.8976:

will we be able to equip 2 weapons once we equip specializations or just 1? eg. necro only can equip greatswords when in the specializations.

You should be able to take any weapon you want. It’s just that you can’t take greatswords when you don’t take the specialization. At first, I thought that taking the specialization would remove one of your weapon option to balance things out. I’m a guardian I can’t take a longbow, but if i’m a the Dragon hunter I can’t take Hammer for exemple. But they didn’t talk about that at all, so maybe i’m wrong on that and that you will have access to all weapons as a specialist.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Also, Zerk is meta because the WHOLE party is Zerk (or mostly Zerk). If you have, say 1-2 Zerk in a varied-gear party, it doesn’t work – the Zerks just keep getting killed because the enemies don’t die fast enough and they run out of Dodges, Blocks, etc. and have to play well for much longer when they have to deal with much longer-lived enemies.

That’s because you are bad. Most of us can solo a dungeon, so 1-2 people not zerk will kitten us off if we asked full zerker in the first place, but it won’t kill us.

The thing is in the last 3 years NOBODY, and there was a lot of people that tried, could come up with an idea to make other gear optimal in PvE. Except for condition. Which is fine and everybody agree that it should be good. Glass canon condition gear should be meta and Anet should fix it. But other than that ;

Either their solution is to nerf zerker at different level, which will never change the fact that zerker will still be the best solution and will change nothing to the current meta game except maybe it will be harder to keep 25 stack of vulnerability because of less precision and longer fight.

Or their solution is to nerf basic active defense so much that you need defensive gear or you will never be able to survive. Which dumb down the game since active defense is why the game is so much fun in the first place.

Or they try to do some magic gymnastic to make role or make defensive gear worth without being a holy trinity, but failed miserably.

Or they ask for more challenging content without realizing that it’s exactly what pro-meta people ask because they know they have a lot more active defence up their sleeves and won’t need any other gear than zerker.

In the end, there is no way to make toughness, vitality and healing power optimal except if they change the game entirely. As long as we have enough active defense, we gonna rely on that before changing gear. The moment we won’t have enough active defense, then yes we gonna need some defensive gear, but the game won’t be the same.

For me there is two ’’solutions’’. Because I get that people see the lack of diversity in gear as a problem. They could make some minor nerf to basic active defense and buff upgrade from other source like traits. And make content more challenging. This way, most people won’t be able to complete content in zerker gear, but it will still be the most optimal way. It will also give more diversity as some ppl will prefer to sacrifice damage modifier from trait to gain the active defense they need to survive, while other will use defensive gear. The fact that zerker is optimal isn’t a problem, but the fact that almost anybody can rock this setup may be a problem pointing to the non challenging nature of the current game.

The second solution would be to make all gear take at least 1 non dps stats. Ideally, it would be stats like boon duration, condition duration, healing power. And maybe removing ferocity as a stats all together (and balancing stats after to make up for that lost). An engineer that give a lot of vulnerability would want a Power, Precision, Condition duration gear, while a Guardian could be best with a Power, Precision, Healing power and a PS Warrior would take a Power, Precision, Boon Duration gear. It’s a big change and I’m sure that A LOT OF PEOPLE could find holes in it. I’m not even sure I really like this idea. But it’s the only one I see where active defense is still the main source of defense, but we have gear diversity.

phys.7689:

EcoRI.9273:

phys.7689:

EcoRI.9273:

Well its because Guardian also has a timewarp. In the current dungeon setting, tome of wrath’s 5sec quickness is enough to nuke most bosses. So in terms of DPS guardian is better. Where mesmers shine is their ability to run ahead of the group and provide portals to reduce the time to get from point A to point B. However this strategy prevents the mesmer from getting loot, which is why you only see mesmers being played in record runs.

then a mes can now double that quickness time, with signet of inspiration, without taking the CM line.

Don’t need double the quickness time for a single encounter when the boss is dead within 5seconds.

then why woould you want the CM at all?

Because you can cast Time Wrap for two consecutive fight.

Medi guardian won’t want DH
AH Guardian won’t want DH
Bunker Guardian won’t want DH

From what I can tell, we probably gonna make a sPvP trap build and DH will be part of the new meta dungeon build.

Jerus.4350:

You’re forgetting the 10% on cripple trait. 10% + 15%, HUGE burst increase.

I’m not forgetting it, i’m ignoring it. The cripple uptime in a dungeon meta will be terribly low. We’ll see when we’ll see when everything is out.

Jerus.4350:

Nerfing might stacking (outside of PS war) would be a nice way to dumb down the game to even people out. If Unshakable leaves and they just have breakbar, then Vuln should be silly easy to upkeep as well.

I still don’t see them raising the HP of enemies by 10X to make burst ineffective. People are already downing things like Lupi in 15s. I think only HoTW bosses take any real time and even they are able to be blown up pretty well.

Don’t think they should nerf might stacking, they already did it. But I guess that dropping fury to a 15%, making vulnerability harder to max, maybe nerfing a bit the banner of the warrior. Those little thing could help. If they just make several small nerf and don’t make these stuff almost useless it should be ok. It will make the nuking of bosses a bit more difficult for dungeon team, but not creating 20min fight for random pugs.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well to be honest chronomancer is pay2win unless for example 5th shatter replaces 4th. Then ok. Else we’re looking at non chronomancers having 4 shatters, chronomancers having same 4 + 5th. That’s not an alternative playstyle, that’s straight up upgrade.

You sacrifice another trait line to get that 5th shatters. You limit your capability in other portion of the game to get that 5th shatter.

phys.7689:

you get back to AAs faster, thats about it.
the DPS of other skills is irrelvent because they are limited by recast times, not by cast times. (in a long fight)

think about it like this, if time warp is so great, why do people barely want one mesmer in a party? 2 mesmers should own right?

not really because quickness isnt as valuable as might, high dps, fury distribution etc.

now alacrity is something new, and i agree that when it comes to creating a party burst, CM is the go to guy.
but outside of that? CM is worse at everything else, (which is fine)

all they would have to do to destroy even that bonus, is make a boss who changes position every X hp%, or puts down aoe that you will want to move out of.

The reason why Mesmer isn’t wanted in dungeon (except for record run), is because at best you can do 1 or 2 timewrap, while having a really bad dps compare to other profession. Now, if you can do 2-4 timewrap in a path AND decrease some of your team cooldown, you start to be valuable enough in a team to be worth the drop in dps of taking a mesmer over another profession.

phys.7689:

time warp only increases AA dmg by 50% over time in exchange for doing that double timewarp, you are giving up shatter dmg/utility or phantasm upkeep/utility.
which is worth it if that was all, but you are also giving up either direct stat boosts, more conditions, more lockdown, or more shatters in addition to that.

also note, from what we have seen quickness is more common in most classes now.
its not all that.

So you sacrificing a percentage of your own damage as a mesmer (which is terribly low anyway in PvE dungeon), to increase the damage of the whole part by 50% during specific fight. Even if taking chronomancer over any other trait line could reduce the damage of the Mesmer by 50% (which it doesn’t), it will still be worth taking chronomancer.

Well in PvE, there will be a clear winner that’s for sure. PvE is about support and dps, which 3 lines will give the most will be the new meta and for now it seem that CM and DH are clear winner. But not by far.

I’m not really an expert with Mesmer, but DH isn’t that more powerful than Virtue or Honor. Virtue give you around 5% damage modifier from UC (25% Aegis uptime) and a 3-5% damage modifier from Power of the Virtuous,

DH is all about the grandmaster trait BGH with give 15% damage modifier + Vulnerability when a foe is tethered by spear of justice.

15% damage modifier + Vulnerability vs 8-10%. It seem that DH is a clear winner. But while Virtue give you a general damage modifier that work for every attack, BGH is a bit more limited. Spear of justice is not a AoE, it’s a single target skill. Yes technically you can get 5 target because it pierce, but in reality it will probably always 1 or 2 targets, maybe 3 if you are lucky. Which mean that a DH guardian in dungeon will be superior against bosses, but a non DH guardian will be better against group of mobs. And we still don’t know how defiant will work now, the vulnerability from BGH may not be necessary.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Thaddeus.4891:

You are right (sort of). Yes if you can block a hit and counter-attack quickly, it will make the dps GS – Mace/Focus reach that of GS – Sw/F. But it’s highly unlikely. You need to land your counter-attack in the first second or you will lose dps. For that reason, it’s more of a gamble than anything else.

It’s very much a gamble and a test of an individual’s skill. I ran it exclusively for a few months and got pretty good at hitting that PS at the right time. I liked it a lot because it felt to me like the more ‘Guardian’ of the weapons we have. It’s a viable alternative with a higher skill cap.

GS + Mace/Focus after the trait changes will be so fun to play. Making sure you optimize your symbol uptime and have Protector Strike ready at anytime. I can’t wait

Vincent.7452:

You’re not producing permanent 25 stacks of might for your team as a PS warrior. Even with a perfect rotation with 100% crit chance you’ll probably average about 10 to15 stacks.

Edit: Unless you’re fighting multiple ennemies but not when you’re fighting bosses which is where it matters most. Granted some boss spawn mobs too.

If you are using the meta build with only Rune of Strength the you are right. But you do not average 10-15 stack.

You are giving 6s of might each time you gain might. With the boon duration from trait and rune of strenght that’s 10.5second. In 10.5 second you have the time to do a Hundred Blade (8 might), a Whirlwind Attack(2-3 might) and 2 auto-attack chain (6 might). For a total of 16-17 might if you have 100% critical chance. Add to that 1 or 2 might from the 3rd bonus from the Rune of Strength and you should maintain between 17 and 19 might by your own.

So yes you are right, PS usually don’t create 25 stack of might by it’s own. But since most party have at least 1 staff ele, it’s usually never a problem to get to 25 and stay there. A PS Warrior can also bring 25 stack of might if he need to with For Great Justice, some sigils or the chinese food.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Mace’s DPS is dependent on how good you are at hitting Protector’s Strike at the right time. If you can get the block and damage out of it with a very short channel you’ll do good DPS. Also your target has to stay in the symbol. Without PS, Mace is lower DPS then Sword. With a quick PS it comes out equal or higher from my testing. Not sure how accurate these statements are but I feel fine running mace with PS as a DPS ability.

You are right (sort of). Yes if you can block a hit and counter-attack quickly, it will make the dps GS – Mace/Focus reach that of GS – Sw/F. But it’s highly unlikely. You need to land your counter-attack in the first second or you will lose dps. For that reason, it’s more of a gamble than anything else.